New technique to tackle diarrhoea bug
SCIENTISTS FROM Bangladesh and Japan have developed a cheap and rapid diagnostic technique to identify strains of a common bug that causes diarrhoea. Scientists had earlier identified over ten genes from five strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli that can cause diarrhoea in humans. Earlier tests involved identifying each individual gene, a costly process that took four to five hours for each gene. Two-step or single-step genetic tests were also developed earlier, but these could not detect all the concerned genes. These tests were based on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique that amplifies genes to make their detection easier. The new PCR test, to be published online in the Journal of Microbiological Methods, identifies ten specific E. coli genes in a single reaction, saving time and money. It was developed by a team of scientists from the University of Hirosaki, Japan, and Dhaka University (DU). In their report the scientists said the new test would be a valuable contribution to routine diagnostic tests while also providing valuable information for physicians and researchers. “A physician treating a patient with diarrhoea would be able to find out his ailment much faster and also, it would cost far less than the conventional method of culturing stools for 24 hours,” Chowdhury Rafiqul Ahsan, one of the three authors of the report, said. Diagnostic laboratories in Dhaka now charge between US$ 23 and US$ 71, depending on how quickly gene matches are obtained. Against this, the new test identifies all ten possible causative genes in a single test that could, on commercialisation, cost less than US$ 7. Ahsan, a senior academician at the department of microbiology at DU, said that the “biggest advantage of the highly reliable technique is (that) it enables us to detect the exact cause of the infection in less than 3–4 hours.” Azharul Islam Khan, head of the diarrhoeal diseases unit at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, said the development was significant for public health. “Last year we found about 12 per cent of all diarrhoea patients suffering from E. coli infection, considered almost as deadly as cholera.” E. coli infection is characterised by rapid discharge of liquid stools which can be fatal if immediate rehydration therapy is not given, Khan added. (SciDev)
Indian creates smartphone for the blind
AN INDIAN designer is developing a smartphone with tactile text that can be used by blind or visually impaired people. Sumit Dagar’s prototype Braille smartphone is expected to be ready by the end of February and the first model could be on the market within a year. Dagar, who won a US$50,000 2012 Rolex Award for Enterprise in November to develop the smartphone, says that design can help technology bridge the gap between people with disabilities and the rest of the population. Dagar’s partners in the five-year smartphone project, which started in 2009, are the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and eye health centre the LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), India. He is working with a four-member team comprising experts from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, New York University in the United States, India’s National Institute of Design and the LVPEI. “The basic handset I am working on now has words and numbers going up and down in Braille. So a user can touch them and recognise or locate numbers and names,” Dagar says. The screen is covered in pins that can rise up from its surface to form Braille words and numbers. He says that several other research institutions have expressed interest in collaborating on the project. To make phones more affordable for visually impaired people, he says that efficient design may make them cheaper, although the primary goal is to design them to work well. There have been previous attempts to create a Braille smartphone, but no prototype has ever been made, says Dagar. He adds that most experiments using touch-based — or haptic — technology have been confined to creating vibrations, so this project is a step forward. A more sophisticated version of the phone could even make images tactile, he says. But he expects such a phone to emerge only towards the end of the five-year project. Ravi Bagree, a member of the Braille phone team from the Delft University of Technology, says that Dagar’s mix of engineering and design background played a part in this innovative work. “[A Braille phone] has not been possible so far because not many people think of the disabled and those who do so don’t have the [necessary] technological background,” says Bagree. Alongside the phone project, Dagar has also created a platform called Assistive Technology Group to link technology with design to help disabled people access and use technology. (SciDev)